


Canopy

by Heligoland



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/F, Nightmares, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 11:53:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heligoland/pseuds/Heligoland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morgana never sleeps. Things change, out there, they stay the same, they march recklessly off to hell or possibly heaven and Morgana can never keep up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Canopy

Morgana is alight, roiled in the canopy of her bed, clambering up the posters. They lean and sway and cross, as she snatches at the delicately etched wood for purchase. The drapes won’t let go of her leg, and her nightgown is not proving much of an ally.

There are things in the room around her. She cannot look at them. They blare and pound. They give her no peace. Things change, out there, they stay the same, they march recklessly off to hell or possibly heaven and Morgana can never keep up. She’s tried. So many times. Bringing even one clear reflection back to the safety of the bed is agony, a fight to the death.

“Give me your hand, Morgana. _Reach_.”

The hand is dark, and strong, the nails dirty. But the fingers are delicate, the wrist thin and fine-skinned. Bracelets of hemp, twined through silver, twined through the tiny bones of _something_ , charred crossways with unutterable runes.

Morgana’s arm aches of fire, fire in her eyes, her gut, her marrow, but she does.

“Reach.”

“Then bloody reach back!” Morgana grits, cursing ungraspable fingers. She brushes them only barely, and they are soft, too soft to be so soiled, and she can’t grip, and she doesn’t want to, a little. She is oddly frightened of how badly she wants this hand, beyond just help and safety and solace. It glows with her craving.

“Morgana. They never told me, I swear it.”

“Save it, and give me your fucking hand!”

Morgana’s fingernails scrape at the bracelets and she gets that unbreakable brown wrist, and she is up top, now, plummeting upwards, in a trail of torn silks and screaming hair. Her bare knees take the brunt of it, the grain of the wood swirls beneath them, and the whole bed twists on its inconstant axes, and Morgause stands firm, carving a hole in the stone ceiling with a blade. Morgana nearly tells her what a ridiculous thing that is to do.

Morgause is painted like a heathen.

“Follow me,” Morgause entreats, as though it is even a question.

Morgana reaches, halfheartedly, for her arm, afraid to smudge her, terrified to find warmth.

Morgause turns a smile on her, so rare, transfiguring, she is human now, instead of a lion. Her hand winds into Morgana’s dark tresses, and she says, light and airy, and with a burdening sort of fondness, “You know, you’re just how I dreamed you’d be.”

And Morgana doesn’t understand. Morgana feels hot and light-headed, this close to Morgause, all twisted up, her lungs fill just to get the feeling of cloth against her skin, her cunt and clit shrieking for her attention, and, good god, she _doesn’t understand_.

The wood’s knots open wide, and Morgana’s foot slips through, and Morgause gets a fistful of shredded silk, but then her eyes are gold and the both of them float, slow and warm and with the ease of a swimmer, she chases Morgause up through the ceiling and into a warm, soft sunlight that stops her from seeing anything, from thinking, from grasping.

Morgana sleeps.

 

Morgana wakes, and it is morning, blessedly morning, and there is no ache behind her eyes... She scrapes the pad of her finger along the engravings, strange to her touch.

One day she will go back and conquer that place, she knows. For now, it can rot.


End file.
